


sleeping beauty and the flower girl

by independentalto



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: but for our sake let's say it's s2 or something, canon is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23863204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/independentalto/pseuds/independentalto
Summary: Kara wakes up dazed, disoriented, and in the back of a HYDRA lab.No, literally, it's a slimy back door, she's freezing, and there's a woman in a flower dress pointing a gun at her.How the hell's she supposed to get out ofthisone?
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	sleeping beauty and the flower girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheQueenInTheNorth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenInTheNorth/gifts).



“Well, well, well, if Sleeping Beauty hasn’t finally woken up.”

 _Ugh._ Kara flexed her jaw experimentally, her tongue poking at an imaginary wad of cotton stuck in her mouth as the sound of rain hammering off of a tin roof filled her ears. Why did it feel like she’d just come out of oral surgery? Why was there an overeager marching band director stomping out a beat against every inch of her skull?

And most importantly, why the _fuck_ did her eyelids refuse to open? “Wha…”

“Having your eyes stretched open will do that to you.” Her eyelids…? God, she wish they’d open. Maybe if she just willed them to really, really hard… “Don’t rush yourself. It isn’t like HYDRA’s stomping the grounds for us. Not at _all_.”

HYDRA? _Great_. Groaning, Kara wrenched her eyelids upwards to find a petite woman standing lazily over her, gun loose in her left hand. She looked familiar, she mused, a scant memory in the back of her mind between pulsing blue lights and a voice telling her all would be well if she complied…

Before _she_ could even process it, she’d snapped to her feet and pinned the woman to the wall, wrists above her head. “What do you want?” she growled, a small voice in the back of her head noting with satisfaction that her voice hadn’t languished at all. She’d definitely have to look into her reaction time later, though. “I saw you. I know you’re with them.”

Always in a flower dress, always with a tunnel-vision-inducing gaze. When she hadn’t been actively trying to scrub the oily derision of the voice in her ear out of her head, Kara would occasionally catch a glimpse of the woman in heated discussions with unseen members of the room. It wasn’t crazy to think she would be involved with them somehow…right?

But apparently Flower Girl thought otherwise. “Appearances are half the game, Agent Palamas,” she managed to get out, and in her shock, Kara relaxed her grip marginally. “The other half is knowing how your opponent plays their cards.”

 _And_ she spoke in riddles. Was this some new form of torture HYDRA’d invented to maximize their brainwashing? If so, she had to give to them. Anyone sane would probably promise to comply given half an hour with Flower Girl.

Luckily, she’d always been deemed a little bit insane.

“Just get to the point, Flower Girl,” she snarled, and said woman raised a carefully manicured eyebrow at the command. Kara raised one right back. “Who are you, where are we, and what does HYDRA want with me?”

“You can call me Raina. I have to admit, though, Flower Girl is a nice touch,” Kara nodded, waiting for her to go on. When the silence stretched on just a second too long, she tightened her grip again, a humorless grin stretching the left side of her face when Raina’s eyes widened in…fear? Good. “As for HYDRA, I think you and I both know what they want with you.”

“Humor me.”

“They want what the rest of the world wants.” Even pushed up against the wall, Raina managed to saturate her response with pomposity. _A drama queen. Great._ Of everyone she could’ve dealt with, she had the monologuing villain. “An inside on SHIELD. Had you complied, all of their pretty little secrets would’ve been in their hands.”

Well, that was obvious. One just didn’t get manacled to a backboard for a goddamned tea party. “Then what do you want with _me_? And let me warn you,” she said, almost touching their noses, “if the next words out of your mouth are ‘for you to comply’, there’s gonna be a nice little hole where that freckle on your forehead is.”

“So flattering of you to notice,” Raina deadpanned, but neither of them missed how the slight note of breathlessness had entered her voice. “But business before pleasure, I’m afraid. Despite the fact that men tend to do the opposite.”

Kara just narrowed her eyes. Only years of Academy training kept the slight pink from creeping up her cheeks, and she tried not to dwell on what exactly that meant. “Then get on with it. What do you want?”

“I want an out.” Raina said shortly, narrowing her eyes right back at her captor. The sentence hung between their bodies for a moment, mingling with the puffs of steam that finished their sentences. Had they been in different circumstances, she mused silently, their current position would have had much more promise. But alas. “And you’re currently burning through the window of time we have for me to get it.”

“And how do I know this isn’t a trap for _me_?” Kara asked. “For all I know, the moment I let you go, I could be back in those shackles.”

Raina tilted her head delicately (or at least as much as one could while still in a chokehold), and her gaze was so condescending, so challenging, Kara itched to let her go, just to be able to say the scathing thing the other woman’s eyes were currently daring her to say. “Who do you think got you _out_ of the shackles?”

“Could be a test,”

“And that’s exactly what I’m counting on.” When Kara frowned again, Raina sighed, rolling her eyes. Weren’t SHIELD agents supposed to be smart? “For all intents and purposes, _you_ , Kara Palamas, are HYDRA’s brand-new toy, all fresh and shiny and ready to comply. I am…how _do_ I put this delicately? I am testing the toy. Making sure the toy is built correctly. Making sure the _toy_ –” Their eyes met again in a sharp glare that seemed to hoist Kara up by the britches. “–does not break.”

“You want me to pretend like the brainwashing worked.” In Kara’s defense, she’d just been subject to heinous brainwashing, presumably knocked out, and was now holding a pretty woman with the potential to kill her against the wall. Sue her for being a little thick-headed. “Bold of you to presume they’ve told me anything.”

Raina’s grin was like a Cheshire cat’s. “Like I said, appearances are half the game,” she breathed, angling closer to Kara as best she could. “Tell me, Kara. Would you believe the little girl in the flower dress would’ve dreamed of even _speaking_ out of turn, let alone tried to break out their shiny new toy on her way out the door?”

“No?” Which, now that she thought about it, was really a potential security hazard. They really had to think about who they were putting into their briefings.

“Exactly. An appearance I intend to ride –” _don’t think about riding, Kara, don’t think about riding_ “–all the way out the door.”

“I don’t suppose I have a choice in this.” Even _if_ she was being tested, there was still the matter of the gun lying on the soaked asphalt. There might not be bullets in it, but the art of pistol-whipping was one Kara knew how to make deadly if pressed. _And_ she’d won against the famed Mockingbird on a few occasions; it wasn’t as if she couldn’t hold her own.

It was better than listening to whoever had been in her ear, at least. If she heard that voice again in her lifetime, it would be way too soon.

“Contrary to what you might think, there are always choices,” Raina said, and _oh_ , those damn riddles. Kara couldn’t believe this was what her freedom hinged on. “Whether you consider them as options is up to you.”

“Well, let’s just say I take the one where I go along with your plan.” Cautiously, she let Raina down from her grip, holding her breath when the other woman didn’t immediately lunge for the gun on the ground. It was only then that she noticed how much _tinier_ she was than Kara. She could understand why she was underestimated, now. “What’s the way out?”

Carefully, Raina bent to pick the gun off of the ground, handing it to Kara magazine-first. She took it, hefting it in her hand before nodding. “Fix your hair first,” she told the agent. “You need to look polished, not like you just made out with someone in a barn.” Her eyes traced Kara up and down. “Although I can’t say I don’t mind.”

 _Goddammit._ Kara wrenched her hair into a ponytail, automatically reaching for the hair tie Raina held out between two fingers. She was _absolutely_ going to ignore the goosebumps than ran up her arms. It was cold and rainy out, and all she had on was the training t-shirt she’d put on the last time she’d left base. That was it. “Appropriate?”

Another flick of the eyes. “Better. Nothing we can do about your face, but then again…” Whatever she’d prepared for, nothing prepared Kara for Raina reaching up and ever-so-gently smudging a bit of dirt off of her cheek. “That’s about as good as we can hope for. Shall we?” Kara could only nod. “Good. We’re going through the labs and out the front. Routine mission, in and out. Thirty blocks, down to the docks, we split.”

“Split?”

“We split.” Honestly, if HYDRA decided to kidnap another agent, Raina hoped they would kidnap one with at _least_ a little bit more brains than beauty. “I’m sure the whole of SHIELD’s out looking for their lost duckling,” she said, and Kara offered only a nonchalant hum. “I don’t think they’d take too kindly to one of HYDRA’s supposed finest delivering her to their doorstep.”

“You never did tell me why you wanted out,” Kara said. Every muscle in her body tensed as the gun in her hands slowly raised, the safety clicking amongst the hard raindrops. “Why _do_ you want out, Raina? What’s in it for you if we walk out of this door free and clear? HYDRA’s going to be looking for the both of us as soon as they figure it out. You don’t have anywhere to go. So really,” she finished, tilting her head just as the other woman had earlier. “What’s in it for you?”

Surprisingly, Raina didn’t flinch, staring down the barrel instead with piercing eyes. “I have a higher purpose,” she said simply, tilting her chin regally. “HYDRA no longer has the means to help me. But seeing as I have a good chunk of their secrets, I doubt they’d be so willing to let me walk free.”

“And you thought the loose cannon would be your best shot?”

“You’re not a loose cannon,” Raina reminded her. “You’re the bright and new shiny toy. Any more questions?”

Kara studied her for a long second. Lies could sit as easily as truths in the other woman’s cheekbones, and there would always be the possibility that she was being oh-so-naively played. But as Raina had said, people always had choices. It was just a matter of whether she considered them as options.

It might be the last thing she ever did, but it was better than the straight option of going back to where she’d been. “Let’s go.”

“See you on the other side,” Raina chirped, and just like that, they were through the door, striding menacingly through the dark corridors of what Kara presumed to be HYDRA’s various labs. She wondered casually which had been the room she’d been kept in, where the attempt on her sanity had occurred and had subsequently failed.

Well, she mused, silently cocking her head to herself, she wasn’t quite sure if the attempt’d failed. She _was_ going along with this plan, after all. And if that didn’t scream insanity, she didn’t know what would.

They reached the elevator banks without much incident, Raina nodding mutely to the spectators around her while Kara simply tightened her hand around her gun. Up, up, up they went while both of them avoided each others’ gaze, Raina staring placidly ahead while Kara picked out the weakest targets in the car. You never knew.

The person on Kara’s right turned to her. “So I’ve heard about the new –”

Thankfully, the elevator opened, cutting off his sentence. Kara walked past him without so much as a backward glance, her steps measured so that Raina would have the chance to close said distance and retain the reins. Her heels cut across the lobby with ease, their _click-clack_ on the linoleum being their only thing marking their journey across the room.

“The new project” was all Raina had to toss at the guard at the door before he was nodding like an over-obedient lapdog, practically launching himself over the security desk to open the door for them. She only gave him a simple nod in return before they were free of the building, the sunlight smacking Kara in the face; it took all of her restraint to not cringe away from it like a college undergraduate facing a Saturday morning hangover.

The next thirty blocks were…well, tense.

Crosswalks seemed to make Raina the most antsy. Whenever they would reach a light, her hands would twist together, squirming back and forth and back and forth to the point where Kara wished she could smack them apart. Said nervousness would always dissipate when the light changed to walk, and for a bit, things would be all right. Then would come another light, and the cycle would start all over again.

As for Kara? She’d been paranoid her entire career. Thirty blocks was nothing.

(Neither of them seemed to notice how their eyes would automatically rove for the other when they got separated in the crosswalk.)

Soon, the docks loomed in sight, seagulls merrily squawking and shitting on the sidewalk like it was their daily job. The two of them stood at their entrance for a moment, wondering what the protocol was for splitting from the partner who’d basically just saved your life. Albeit in a roundabout way, but semantics. Did you get emotional and say a goodbye? Did you just nod stoically and turn in the other direction?

In the end, Kara chose a mix of both. “Can you shoot?”

“Well enough.”

“Acceptable.” She pressed the gun into Raina’s hand, praying it wouldn’t be the last thing she did. But if there was anything she hoped she’d accomplished in the last thirty blocks, it was that the other woman would try to shoot her the _next_ time they met. “Be safe.” There was only a nod in return before Kara walked off, an unfamiliar feeling she refused to address settling into her stomach.

It wasn’t even twenty feet before she turned back, hoping to get a last glimpse of the girl in the flower dress, only to find that the center of her attention for the last three hours had already melted into the crowd.

* * *

"Agent Palamas, you're needed in the briefing room." 

One last attempted roundhouse kick to the head (of _course_ she'd volunteered to help retrain Bobbi in rehab. In her book, they were still wins, no matter how injured her friend was. And the wins were what counted.) and Kara ducked out of the ring over to where Coulson stood, observing the fight. "You called, sir?" 

He nodded, and they set off into the maze-like hallways. "Someone just came in who we _think_ might be in HYDRA's crosshairs. She's got valuable information that we could really use to take them down." They stopped in front of the door, and he handed her the manila folder in his hand with a decidedly blank look. "Says she'll only talk to you." 

"Me?" Kara asked, frowning. Who in their right mind... "Are you sure it's me?" 

"It's you," Coulson confirmed. She wasn't sure whether she liked the forced blank look or not. "Find out what she's got for us, won't you?" And with that, he walked away, leaving a very confused Kara to open the door to the interrogation room. 

"Look, I don't know who you are, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the person you --" And immediately stopped short, because sitting in the chair, sans flower dress but still always with that regal chin tip, was Raina. 

_Of fucking course._

"Agent Palamas," was all she said, and god _dammit_ , the goosebumps were back. "It's been a while." 


End file.
